Western Lit, shot to death by ‘trigger warnings’

Boring bien pensant opinion in Europe has long maintained that low-brow American culture — all the greasy fast food, oafish Hollywood shoot ’em up films (often starring a muscle-bound Austrian, Belgian, or Swede), and schlock television — has done incalculable damage to highbrow European culture. And it has happened with the assent of the average European, who happily scarfs down a McRib sandwich, feet swaddled in Air Jordans, while queuing for the latest “Transformers” film.

But there is a more pernicious American cultural invasion, as irritatingly destructive as the North American gray squirrel and, unlike the Hollywood blockbuster, wholly immune from free market pressures. It was noticed in 1994 by a reporter for Reuters, who gravely reported that the scourge of political correctness, “an American import regarded by many Britons with the same distaste as an unpleasant virus, finally seems to be infecting British society.” First it poisons the local universities, then within a generation wends its way into the broader culture, wreaking havoc on the native intellectual ecosystem. It’s the most odious, implacable, and least remarked upon manifestation of American cultural imperialism.

Politically correct

And so here we are a generation after that Reuters report, with sensible Europeans now fretting over a mutated strain of that old virus. Writing in the left-leaning magazine The New Statesman, British academic Pam Lowe worried that a new fad in American academia called the “trigger warning” would soon touch down in the UK, requiring the sensible professoriate to valiantly resist the boneheaded ideas of activist students. In his new book, appropriately titled “Trigger Warning,” British writer Mick Hume warns that trigger culture has already “spread across the Atlantic,” and supine European college administrators have given in faster than Marshal Pétain.

The warning allows psychologically damaged readers to opt out of an assignment, or at least steady a nervous hand while turning pages of a triggering book.

So what exactly is a trigger warning? Precisely that: a label on a work of literature, history, and memoir, designed to forewarn students that what they are about to read might upset them or “trigger” an episode of PTSD. The warning allows psychologically damaged readers to opt out of an assignment, or at least steady a nervous hand while turning pages of a triggering book. One particularly silly American college gave an example of how professors might warn readers that Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s celebrated postcolonial novel “Things Fall Apart” could send them into spirals of despair, explaining that “it may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.”

And more.

But last week witnessed a minor victory for the forces of common sense — and provided a glimmer of hope for Europe — when Columbia University, under pressure from its perennially aggrieved student body, ruled that it wouldn’t be affixing trigger warnings to classroom texts in the coming academic year.

Last year, multiple Columbia students objected to the inclusion of Ovid’s 1st century lyric poem “Metamorphoses” in a class devoted to classic Western literature, with one tallying that it contains “roughly 80 instances of assault.” All of them triggering. Indeed, even this tally is an underestimate, she explained, having “treated many of the instances of mass rape on the syllabus as a single data point for simplicity.”

‘Sensitive’ syllabi

Lest you think this is something promoted by silly students but resisted by clever professors, Columbia University last week conceded the point: “Metamorphoses,” that classic of Western literature, has been purged. No trigger warnings, sure, but no more Ovid.

In its place, Columbia has selected Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel “Song Of Solomon,” which has frequently been the target of bans in the United States by prissy, anti-intellectual religious types, adding a touch of diversity to the Great Books canon. But Morrison’s more famous novel “Beloved” was not chosen, probably because it’s full of vivid scenes of rape and racism that could be “problematic” for some students.

Columbia apparently had considered adding “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece of Western literature, to the “Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy” course, though it, too, failed to make the final cut. And again, one could reasonably assume that Columbia wasn’t interested in traumatizing readers with the pedophilic effusions of Humbert Humbert, whose sexual compulsions are for a prepubescent girl whom he calls — trigger warning — the “light of his life, the fire of his loins.”

European intelligentsia used to ruthlessly mock this type of censoriousness masquerading as sensitivity. Because until the mainstreaming of political correctness, these literary Carrie Nations, for the most part, all inhabited the same side of the ideological divide — they were almost all religious conservatives. I turned to the American Library Association’s 1995 list of banned books — literary works under attack by would-be censors and right-wing moral scolds — and noticed the inclusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby,” which was rejected from Baptist College in South Carolina because of “language and sexual references.”

Censorious students

Twenty years later, and with social conservatism on the decline, it’s still under attack — but by philistines on the other side. Writing in the Rutgers University student paper, one particularly twitchy undergraduate suggested that professors plaster a trigger warning on “The Great Gatsby” — a book of “gory, abusive, and misogynistic violence”— that warned of the themes of “suicide,” “domestic abuse,” and “graphic violence” contained therein.

Allowing teenagers who know nothing of great literature the power to determine what should be taught as great literature seems ill-considered.

Now that books are being vacated from syllabuses and speakers blocked from campuses to protect students from some “ism” or another (racism, sexism, classism, able-ism, etc.) and the trauma of hearing dissenting opinions, the censors are getting a hearing that the religious never managed.

But still, it’s a good sign for Europe that American institutions attempting to codify trigger warnings into school policy have failed. Last year Oberlin College, always a thought leader in stupid thoughts, caved to student demands for trigger warnings. And then in the face of widespread external ridicule, they backed off. But Oberlin is still eager to cosset and protect its students from the horrors of great books and controversial thoughts. When the writer Christina Hoff Sommers appeared at Oberlin to debate the existence of “campus rape culture” (she’s a skeptic), students who disagreed with her were offered counseling in a “safe space.” A similar “safe space” was provided following a Hoff Sommers lecture at Georgetown University. Likewise students at Brown University, who were exposed to two sides of a debate on the same topic, were offered a “safe space” equipped, according to an account in The New York Times, with “cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.”

If a once-prestigious university like Columbia wants to hold itself hostage to the vicissitudes of underdeveloped undergraduate minds, they are welcome to do so. But allowing teenagers who know nothing of great literature the power to determine what should be taught as great literature seems ill-considered.

And when this Orwellian nonsense lands in the United Kingdom it will likely warn students off Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” (racism and anti-Semitism) and Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” (scenes of violent rape). Or a poem by that knuckle dragger Philip Larkin (racism, sexism, classism). Or that all-purpose hater V.S. Naipaul (you name it, he’s said something offensive about it).

Keep the greats great

David Alderson, a professor of English literature at Manchester University, told the Daily Telegraph recently that trigger warnings are “not currently a major issue [in the United Kingdom]” and that while he is confident that “most students are smart enough” to reject them, he confessed that he doesn’t “have confidence that institutions are.”

So allow me to, just this once, encourage in my European comrades a healthy outburst of anti-Americanism: Reject this latest academic trend from the U.S. Refuse to plaster the great works of European literature with warning stickers. And realize that the enemies of European civilization are not Hollywood moguls, Uber executives, and McDonald’s franchisees but the choleric, censorious American college student determined to undo the “Eurocentrism” of Western literature and make sure great books never again challenge readers or make them uncomfortable.

Michael C. Moynihan is a columnist for The Daily Beast.

This article was corrected July 18. Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” was written in 8 AD. An earlier version misstated the date.

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Marcel

American right wingers really love to proclaim how they champion freedom etc… except of course the freedom to read books that they don’t agree with or that challenge the stupidest idea of all time: religion.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 10:18 AM CEST

Nigel Tolley

Well said.
Since literally anything can “trigger”, literally nothing can be said, or done either, let alone debated, under these insane rules.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 10:21 AM CEST

Erica Schulz

Did either of you read the article? This isn’t about right wing censorship in the 50s, it’s about left wing coddling right now.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 2:28 PM CEST

ExLiberal

Leftists censor.
They love censorship.
“Political Correctness” is just a small part of it.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 2:47 PM CEST

Pieter Coessens

by these ‘trigger warning’ criteria the majority of European literature would be censored going from Shakespeare to Tolstoï to Voltaire. With all respect to the victims of tragedies, but blocking books because they might offend is ludicrous, if we continue along this line every form of medium will be censored. And anyway, these books were written to shock, to confront the readers with reality, not pull the wool over their eyes.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 7:09 PM CEST

Louis Anthes

Could we stop reading Augustine, Luther too?

Posted on 7/19/15 | 5:03 PM CEST

Matt

The author of this article appears to be so infatuated with his own flimsy rhetoric that he has failed to provide any sort of coherent argument about trigger warnings at all. He insinuates that trigger warnings are censorship but provides not a single instance thereof. The author claims that trigger warnings are damaging to broader culture, but his examples come from obscure books that almost nobody reads. The author ad-homs students who call for warnings and so reveals his own intellectual limitations. No trigger warning is needed for this article; it was too stupid to truly offend.

Posted on 7/19/15 | 6:05 PM CEST

Amy Roth

Marcel, what ca you be thinking??? What “right-wing” censors are you talking about? The “trigger-warners” aren’t right wing at all — quite the contrary! Conservatives BELIEVE in preserving the past — even the memory of the most evil parts of the past! As Faulkner said, “The past is always with us. It isn’t even past.”
I think your comment is just a reflexive jab at people YOU don’t agree with. There’s no fact or logic behind it.

Posted on 7/19/15 | 6:18 PM CEST

MargyO

These Socialists (students and their ‘professors’) DESERVE each other.

Posted on 7/19/15 | 6:44 PM CEST

Okpulot Taha

Mark Twain continues to hold this honorific status of being the most frequently banned or censored author. Publishers routinely edit and censor his stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

This insane political correctness is real-to-life Fahrenheit 451.

Okpulot Taha – Choctaw Nation

Posted on 7/19/15 | 7:29 PM CEST

TH

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is epic, not lyric. (Pedantic quibble, I know, but I can’t resist.)

Posted on 7/19/15 | 10:41 PM CEST

Chris LeGras

Hate to burst your self-righteous bubble but if anything the US is returning the favor. The origins of political correctness lie firmly in the European Left, specifically the single cause fallacy of Cultural Marxism (all history is a history of power/oppression) and the deconstruction of that noxious Frenchman Jacques Derrida. In fact deconstruction was central to anti-US critiques so fashionable in Western Europe in the 1960s-80s. Political correctness doesn’t exist without deconstruction, much less without Marx.

The idea that Europe somehow now is being invaded by a sua sponte American intellectual contagion reflects either an embarrassing ignorance of history or a willful denial of it. If anything we’re just returning the favor. You’re welcome!

Posted on 7/19/15 | 11:59 PM CEST

Stop

Get real, Marcel. This trigger-warning garbage, and its ensuing censorship of books on campus, is brought to you exclusively by the American LEFT.

Posted on 7/20/15 | 5:33 AM CEST

JustinCase

Marcel…is having a major trigger warning. Need a blankie?

Posted on 7/20/15 | 9:10 AM CEST

SMH

If only this were the extent of it. Back across the pond our young soft-minded illiberals practically need fainting sofas at the mere mention of the Washington Redskins football team or the viewing of certain antebellum flags.

Poor dears, life is simply going to eat them alive — oh wait, should that have come with a trigger warning?

Posted on 7/20/15 | 2:43 PM CEST

Jr565

Marcel, you do realize this is entirely a creation of the left? This is right out of feminism. They are the ones pushing this.

Posted on 7/20/15 | 2:48 PM CEST

Mia

PTSD is really something to worry about in people who have been locked up somewhere and physically or mentally tortured, which most people in the US have not experienced. If we’d quit defining down the diagnosis, there would be less of this. While I see nothing wrong with putting a generalized content warning on some of these stories, this is reaching crazy proportions. And how does it square with all of the really graphic portrayals of violence and rape in movies and TV? Why is it bad to read in lit but no one is upset by it on film?

Posted on 7/20/15 | 2:51 PM CEST

Jr565

Matt,
was that satire? Or are you really that foolish?

Posted on 7/20/15 | 2:53 PM CEST

Julie

These are the same kids that watch all the current TV and movie trash and Bill Maher when they are only equipped for sesame street. Give me a break

God save us from the self-righteous morons who promote “Politically Correct” interpretations of art, literature, behavior and life in general. This is not a result of right wing loonies but of an American intellectual elite. It began in the 60s and is part of an agenda that seeks to create an Orwellian world.

Posted on 7/20/15 | 9:30 PM CEST

Fixpir

M Moynihan, just for you, a local illustration of this happening now in France :

Forbes

Please… Political Correctness pre-dates 1994, and certainly wasn’t an American export to the UK or Europe. It’s an invention of the Left, wholly endorsed by the Frankfurt School. Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” spelled out the tendency and the risk.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 4:24 PM CEST

Dale

Matt: Nobody reads “The Great Gatsby”? Please, just start over, and when you’ve caught up to the rest of us you can feel free to enlighten us with your commentary. In other words, don’t be an idiot.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 5:14 PM CEST

johnt

There is a unhealthy movement in academia to denigrate Western culture, destructive really. Problem is no worthy replacement is available or desired by many academics.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 5:26 PM CEST

Jeffersonian

What happened to the free-speech Left? They now spend their days figuring out ways to silence any idea that they deem unacceptable, going so far as using the power of the State to do so.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 5:38 PM CEST

Marco

Macel, below me, is literally a pinhead. The American right doesn’t ban books…the Left does. And it allows an atheist queeb like Marcel to embarrass himself all he likes with his ignorant denunciations of religion. The Left, of course, bans religious speech.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 10:13 PM CEST

Nate Whilk

I think the following quote shows that trigger warnings have achieved unintentional self-parody, or as we in the USA might say, “jumped the shark”.

‘ However, we use the phrase “content warning” instead of “trigger warning,” as the word “trigger” relies on and evokes violent weaponry imagery. This could be re-traumatizing for folks who have suffered military, police, and other forms of violence. So, while warnings are so necessary and the points in this article are right on, we strongly encourage the term “content warning” instead of “trigger warning.” ‘

Posted on 7/22/15 | 3:26 AM CEST

Harry Taft

I’ve spent most of my life (late 70’s) with my nose in a book. I can’t count the number of life’s lessons I’ve been privileged to learn without making some grave error of judgement. The value of the classics to me lies in the manner in which an author teaches about life while entertaining at the same time. The current trends in education are a series of backward steps for the English speaking peoples. It is sad to see and difficult to contemplate where such behavior leads.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 5:59 AM CEST

Matt

@JR656 and Dale
Your ad homs reveal the limited extent of your intellectual faculties. The way people here blindly insist that a warning label is the same thing as book burning (it is not) or censorship (it is not) is simply moronic. So, once again for the mentally challenged, the author of this piece is asserting a claim of censorship that is backed up only by his own gooey feelings on the subject. If you think I’m wrong look up the definition of censorship and then find an example of trigger warnings in books and come back with your evidence because I have no interest in humoring your sensitive, ignorant, partisan feelings.

And nobody that isn’t an English teacher cares about The Great Gatsby.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 5:33 PM CEST

Jane

@Amy Roth: That’s fundamentally untrue. Check out the new history textbooks Texas adopted. And it’s positively laughable to try to insist that the Left bans books, when just a look at the list of most challenged books would tell you it’s usually the Right.

Now, all that said, the sky is not falling. Perhaps if some of you actually read books, you’d know that “Political Correctness” is a Communist contrivance. It’s what happens in China when people are asked out they like the party and they bare their teeth in a rictus grin and say they love it whether they do or not because to say otherwise would get them in trouble with The Party. The Right imported it here as a weapon to use against people who, rightfully, demanded that people stop calling them n*ggers and k*kes and the Right embraced it because their right to bigotry is way more important than anyone’s right to be treated like a person and a fellow American. This article is just more hysteria about Milennials and about “University Liberals” destroying the country because the America that was for you and only you is falling out of your hands. This isn’t happening on any grand scale and it never will. The slippery slope argument is for people who can’t say no.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 6:21 PM CEST

VKabov

I am shocked that Kafka has not been mentioned a paradigmatic trigger for depression and suicidal thoughts. On another note and I respect Politico’s open comment policy, but I would like to make note of Mitzymoon’s disgracefully and profoundly offensive anti-semitic comment…

Posted on 7/22/15 | 8:51 PM CEST

Fixpir

@Nate Whilk : excellent ! at least, we can laugh, before being forced to cry.
@Jeffersonian : Yes, where are the old days gone. The left of my youth, vocal about liberty and free speech has disappeared. Now is the neo-fascist politically correctness, you are attacked by people claiming to be Muslim but should still consider them as some kind of fragile holy cows.
Those leftist guys spent their lives elevating a wall against illusory fascism, but did not realize they grew up fascism within their own walls.

@Matt : This is worse than state censorship. Self imposed censorship is the holy grail of any dictatorship, much more efficient than when imposed from the outside.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 9:17 PM CEST

plutoretrograde

I’m a leftie who thinks these rules are ridiculous. Not all leftie feminists are marching in lockstep with the new “Carrie Nations.” If they can’t handle literature, they won’t be able to handle real life when they leave the ivy-covered quad. God forbid they should leave their neighborhoods, let alone travel beyond the developed world to see what most of this planet looks like.

Posted on 7/23/15 | 6:35 AM CEST

Klidi

And why has the article about stupid decisions of some of the American universitites have to be soaked in cheap nationalism, ridicule of ‘European intelligentsia’? Would it perhaps upset eagily triggered American minds too much, if it didn’t start with a pat on their back and assurance of American supremacy?

Posted on 7/23/15 | 5:09 PM CEST

Jason

As with virtually all things, too much of a good thing is a bad thing guys. Having sensitivity to people’s feelings and experiences is a good thing. But this definitely takes it too far.

Posted on 7/23/15 | 6:20 PM CEST

Zach

The author makes some good points. American universities have overreacted to feminist and minority concerns, and in doing so are censoring some of literature’s finest minds and infantilising college students. But that said, even if “safe spaces” are a bit ridiculous, I do think students shouldn’t have to read works they’re not interested in. Someone who sexually abused as a child, for instance, shouldn’t have to reiterate in her essays a college professor’s praise of Lolita, even though it is a masterpiece. Students should have some amount of say in what they read, and I do think that administrators and professors should generally give a damn about students’ mental health. I don’t think there are easy answers here, but I do think that students should be allowed to abstain from reading a book on an individual basis, as opposed to banning the book out right! The author is beyond pedantic when describing young minds, which I don’t think is always fair. I think the “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” are ridiculous, but at the same time I think this author’s attitude represents another extreme. To me, the answer exists somewhere in the middle, in between overly protective to the students’ voice and utterly indifferent.

Posted on 7/24/15 | 2:53 AM CEST

JCP

What a heavily biased scaremongering article. Reads like something from the Daily Mail with all the baseless conjecture (there could be any number of reasons why students were reading Song of Solomon and not beloved, for example) and a thorough lack of sourcing.

I’m someone who disagrees with the use of trigger warnings, for what it’s worth. But I also dislike poor journalism.

Posted on 7/24/15 | 9:55 PM CEST

Fixpir

@Zach : “Someone who sexually abused as a child, for instance, shouldn’t have to reiterate in her essays a college professor’s praise of Lolita, “ : But isn’t that when reality is confronted with fiction that the most interesting comments can be made ? Isn’t a person either culprit or victim of abuse in the best position to explain why the professor’ praise of “Lolita” is excessive and should be amended ?

Literature is about real life. If it is unconnected, it’s dead.

” I do think students shouldn’t have to read works they’re not interested in.”
Well, being a student is, basically, trusting something or somebody, accepting that one is ignorant and hoping that he/she will be less ignorant after studying.
US students have a lot of liberty already in choosing their courses. Allowing them to choose within their courses what they will read – by definition, without first hand knowledge – can only be the result of prejudice – taking a decision without full knowledge is the very definition of prejudice – and an open door for all bigotries, be it religious, atheist (atheist bigotry being extremely strong those last years among intellectuals), political or whatever.

Posted on 7/26/15 | 10:16 AM CEST

Steve

My father was a Korean War vet and went to law school with a bunch of guys and gals who saw a lot of crap in both WW2 as well as Korea. Almost all of them were on the GI bill. And for as many nightmares these people saw, somehow and some way they were able to get through law school without trigger warnings for PTSD. Yep, they read case after case in criminal law about murders and rapes and all sorts of terrible things after just coming back from war…and yet….they managed to get through law school and become successful professionals. Maybe these people had something we used to call character and knew that the best way to move on from the past was to leave the past in the past. But alas, our current crop of weak minded and fragile super sensitive children don’t want their feelings to be hurt when they read something that disturbs them so we as a society must cuddle them, kiss them, tell them that the world is full of flowers and rainbows, there is no such thing as cancer, the tooth fairy is real, and no one ever gets hurt in relationships. Welcome to the world of anti intellectualism and insanity.

Posted on 8/13/15 | 8:00 AM CEST

TerriG

Ugh, more whining from the middle aged about how the young are destroying everything. What a pastiche. This isn’t about left-wingers or right-wingers, it’s about staid academics unwilling to view material through a different lens and allow culture to evolve because they might get left behind. You sound like you’re bitching about hippies, and yes, you’re just as boring and entitled as your parents and the young you so despise. You think Ovid can’t survive THIS? Ovid has survived far worse and will live on, you’re just not the youngest, freshest thinker on the block anymore.

Thank you Michael for a highly entertaining and well-written bashing of this American infantilization of college students. It might well be pointed out that defining something as “offensive” before reading it poisons the well and certainly prevents any neutral interpretation of the material, as it has been tainted with a highly suggestive ‘reading’ qua ‘offensive’ before anyone even lays a delicate eye upon a single word.

Posted on 9/11/15 | 10:15 AM CEST

Amy

Wow it’s almost as if spending three seconds at the start of a lesson telling students about a trigger could stop already vulnerable people from breaking down in front of their peers. Like printing a tiny note on the front of something could stop someone experience an episode that is so horrific that anyone who experienced one for a second would never argue against putting them in books.

We have them for films and that hasn’t ruined the film industry. I have a blood phobia that causes me to pass out, off a chair, hitting my head on the way down potentially (but luckily did not) causing serious injury. If the teacher had just warned of the blood before hand that never would have happened.

My anxiety disorder has forced me to leave classroom mid-read because what I am reading so directly targets mental illness or suicide, the knowledge that everyone else is reading the same thing can push me over the edge. I have no comment on PTSD but I know that having to leave a classroom mid-book causing me so much anxiety I feel sick just thinking about it, that would be avoided if I there was a trigger warning on the book.

Posted on 9/11/15 | 11:35 PM CEST

Prashant

Extremists on both sides of the political divide threaten to undermine the humanities. While these “activists” undoubtedly threaten the quality of liberal education at US universities, their counterparts on the right, the free-market libertarians, are actively campaigning to cut public funding to state universities. As a result, the liberal subjects are the first to be discontinued. Universities in New York state have already discontinued French and the classics. The liberal humanities are on attack from both sides!